When Richard Ellis began his work at the American Museum of Natural History in the early ’60s, one of his first tasks was to design a blue whale. That original 94-foot-long specimen, which hung in the Hall of Ocean Life as if in motion through the open sea, became iconic. Humbly, Ellis says he didn’t know much about whales at the time, but that assignment launched him into a lifelong pursuit to capture the essence of whales and sharks in their living natural splendor, in contrast with the way they were historically seen—dead on a dock. “Transposing dead animals onto a canvas was no good,” says Ellis. “I felt what the world lacked was a reasonable record of what live whales actually look like, and that’s why I started painting them.”

Ellis went on diving expeditions all over the world, and in his travels, he realized that there was another animal that needed saving—“the much-maligned creature known as the shark.” Says Ellis, “As an illustrator I became interested in what sharks look like, their design, their graceful lines. They seem to represent an element of wildness in the world that we don’t see much of anymore. We tend to attempt to control nature, but sharks remain out of our realm of control.”